


Come in from the Cold

by forthegreatergood



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, First Time, Fluff, Getting Together, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 19:08:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20179255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood
Summary: Crowley’s little demonic miracle with the books lets Aziraphale stop worrying about whether or not Crowley loves him back and just get on with it for once.Any other night, Aziraphale  might have let Crowley go, circled back to him in a bit, tried to mend things without being too forward about it.  But it was tonight, and Aziraphale had come perilously close to being discorporated for God only knew how long, and Crowley had still, after all this time, thought to save his books--and Crowley was still, after all this time, thinking about holy water.





	Come in from the Cold

**Author's Note:**

> All characters property of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and the respective production and licensing companies.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Thanks as always to my lovely beta readers, [fursasaida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fursasaida/pseuds/fursasaida) and [foxyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyk/pseuds/foxyk)!

Aziraphale clutched the bag full of books to his chest and tried to think around the overwhelming warmth suffusing every inch of his corporation. In the driver’s seat, Crowley was swearing to himself and piloting them around piles of rubble at speeds that seemed improbable at best, the car responding in a way that felt preternatural.

Aziraphale sneaked a look at the demon out of the corner of his eye. He seemed the same as he always did, though there was a sheen of sweat on his face that wasn’t often there. Consecrated ground, Aziraphale thought. He chewed his lip and hugged the bag more tightly to his chest.

“How did you know about all this?” he asked, his voice barely rising over the roar of the engine. Definitely preternatural--the thing practically _was_ roaring, a noise with a sinister edge no mere machine had ever managed.

Crowley shrugged, his shoulders tenting the generous, plunging cut of his jacket. “Spies, liars, and general ne’er-do-wells are hardly unknown quantities in my line of work.”

“You’ve been keeping tabs on me.”

“If I’d been keeping tabs on you, this would never’ve gotten so far,” Crowley grumbled, swerving around a startled dog. Aziraphale began to tip sideways in his seat and scrambled for a handhold. Crowley reached over and braced him without taking his eyes off the road. “Of course, if I’d thought for a second you’d do something like this, I would’ve been. Honestly, angel, it’s like you need a minder.”

Aziraphale smiled to himself. Crowley didn’t sound any differently than he ever had, did he? And yet... 

Crowley had walked on consecrated ground for him. Crowley had offered him a ride home unprompted, gotten the door for him, tucked the edge of his coat in when it might have gotten caught in the door. Crowley had saved the books without being asked, without Aziraphale even thinking of it until it had been too late.

Demons couldn’t love, and yet here they were.

“Has it stopped…” Aziraphale glanced at Crowley’s profile, caught the tightening of his jaw. “Are you all right, I mean?”

“I’ll be fine in a bit, I expect,” Crowley said, which wasn’t as definitive an answer as Aziraphale would have liked. “Not a patch on sneaking into the Vatican, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Why on earth were you sneaking into the--” Aziraphale cut himself off. “Never mind. I’m sure I don’t want to know.”

“No?” Crowley looked hurt. “I’d think you’d approve, actually. A few too many books had wound up in their libraries’ closed stacks. You know how it goes with that sort of thing--they get moved, and then the decision never gets revisited later. I was just getting them back into circulation for the junior priests.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips, then decided not to ask any follow-up questions. He really didn’t want to know. Not now, not tonight. Not with this new discovery sitting in his chest like a hearth fire, warm and bright and almost unbearable. So many things he’d thought were forever out of reach were suddenly spread out before him like a banquet, and it was almost too wonderful to bear.

“Thank you,” he said instead. He wasn’t sure Crowley had heard him until he saw Crowley’s throat bob, his jaw setting the way it did when he was playing at being casual. 

All those times Crowley had done him favors that had nothing to do with the arrangement just to make him happy. All those times Aziraphale had tried to convince himself that he meant more to Crowley than a simple means to an end, more than a valuable asset. He’d never quite managed it; even the greenest of agents knew how quickly those little gestures paid for themselves. His little fantasies had felt more like delusions, and dangerous ones at that. And everyone knew that demons didn’t love--it was practically definitional. They weren’t capable of it; they’d rejected love when they’d rejected God. Loving them was like pouring water out on sand, and looking for love from them was like expecting a desert to turn into a lake. 

But then, Crowley had never met a mold he didn’t want to break, had he?

“Well, you know. I was in the neighborhood,” Crowley told him, and if Aziraphale hadn’t been listening for it, he’d never have noticed the hitch in his voice.

And then they were at the bookshop, and Crowley was smirking at him. Aziraphale tried to banish what was doubtless a quite ridiculous smile from his face, and he lowered the bag to his lap.

“You know, it’s been a very trying night,” Aziraphale said, schooling his voice into seriousness.

“All in a day’s work for a double-agent, I should think.” Crowley’s smirk got bigger.

“I’ve got a bottle of cognac I’ve been saving for a special occasion,” Aziraphale continued, refusing to let Crowley bait him. “It’d be a shame to drink it alone.”

“Sounds lovely,” Crowley said. “I don’t doubt you’ll be able to find someone to help you with it in very short order.” 

The demon didn’t sound any different than he normally did; this night was no different than any other time they’d worked together. Aziraphale’s little revelation had apparently been quite some time in coming, hadn’t it?

“Crowley.”

“Mmm?” Crowley’s smirk deepened, and even in the dark, Aziraphale could see the shadow of amusement behind his glasses. Any other night, and Aziraphale might have blushed at it, felt wrong-footed and off balance for wanting things he couldn’t have, and chalked it up to a demon’s wiles.

“Come in and have a drink with me,” Aziraphale said firmly.

“Oh, is that--” Crowley snorted, tamping down the grin that was threatening to ruin his studied nonchalance. “All you had to do was ask, angel.”

It was a little too sincere, and--_oh_. Crowley was all slithering imposition and coquettish lounging and slinking, smiling temptation--except, of course, when he paused, waiting for Aziraphale to respond. Waiting for Aziraphale to say yes, or to invite him in, or to ask him to dinner. Always waiting for an answer. 

Aziraphale barely swallowed a renewal of that ridiculous smile.

Crowley opened the car door for him and extended his hand when Aziraphale found himself trying to navigate the curb, the loose stones of the street, and the bag of books all at once. Aziraphale took it, then blushed when Crowley’s surprised smile made it occur to him that Crowley had been offering to take the bag. 

Aziraphale covered the flush with a backward glance at the car; it crouched there at the curb like some great beast, engine growling as it cooled. Crowley held onto his hand for just a few seconds too long, then waited at his elbow while he opened the bookshop, and Aziraphale had forgotten how achingly, tantalizingly sweet it was to have the demon so close. Once they were inside, Crowley looked around, loosened his tie, and chuckled.

“Have you sold even a single book in the past hundred years?” he asked, hanging his hat on the rack.

Aziraphale grimaced at the thought. Not if he could help it, he hadn’t. People took such appallingly bad care of them, and they always wanted the absolute last books they should be reading. Tonight had only been the most extreme example of a persistent trend.

“I’ve sold a few,” he said, setting the bag down behind the counter. “Here and there.”

Had it really been so long since Crowley had been in the shop? Not quite a hundred years, no, but between Crowley’s nigh-endless post-Revolution nap and that awful argument about the holy water, it had been close enough to it. Aziraphale sighed. He didn’t want to dwell on either topic tonight, but there was no forgetting them, either. A hundred years was nothing, the blink of an eye; a hundred years was its own form of eternity.

“Come on.” He tipped his head toward the back room. “The booze is back here, and we can have some light with no one knocking on the door and scolding us about it.”

Crowley followed amiably, then stopped at a shelf of newer books and gave Aziraphale a look he could feel even around the glasses. “Been going a bit hard on the baroness, have we?”

“The Emperor’s Candlesticks was a masterpiece,” Aziraphale said coolly. He frowned, and his eyes narrowed. Crowley wouldn’t be picking at him about Orczy’s books if he didn’t know exactly what they were. “I thought novels were for people too afraid to really live?”

“They are.” Crowley shifted his weight from one foot to the other and grinned. “The theater, on the other hand…”

“Oh, good lord, that’s right.” The Scarlet Pimpernel had been a stage production before it had been published as a novel, and Aziraphale had almost forgotten about that interminable few years when it had seemed impossible to get anyone to put on anything that _wasn’t_ about a dashing hero who spent a significant amount of the performance pretending to be a feckless klutz. The amount of uninspired slapstick he’d suffered through in one season alone... He paused, suspicion overtaking him. “Was that _you_?”

“What, goosing reviews and whipping up a frenzy about a play with the most ludicrously demanding quick-changes in the modern era?” Crowley asked, his voice dripping with wounded innocence. “I would never.”

“Was there some actor in particular it was aimed at, or were you just entertaining yourself at the expense of the greater theatrical community?” Aziraphale asked. He ushered Crowley into the back room and shut the door, then set about lighting a few lamps. “Clear some chairs, would you? Just set the books wherever, they’re not in any particular order.”

Crowley snapped his fingers, and the two coziest chairs’ burden of books and papers disappeared, with two matching mounds appearing in the far corner of the room.

“You didn’t like it?” Crowley asked, shedding his coat like a skin. He actually did sound a bit surprised at that, and Aziraphale set the glasses down and looked askance at him. “Thought it would’ve been right up your alley, a play about a big fussy dandy with a heart of gold that’s secretly a dab hand with a sword.”

Aziraphale’s brows drew together. He’d never dragged Crowley to anything like that, had he? Maybe the demon was thinking of the first time they’d seen Hamlet, or misrecalling one of the Henrys.

“Ten minutes of pratfalls per act,” Aziraphale reminded him, shuddering. “And then the costuming really got out of hand, and they started casting different actors as the vigilante and the nobleman to save on having to change them into different clothes twice a scene, and honestly, the preposterous reveals they expected us to just go along with!”

The worst performances had given him an uncomfortable few evenings of almost sympathizing with the Revolutionary zealot bound and determined to send everyone to the guillotine. The best ones had given him an uncomfortable few evenings of recalling exactly who’d saved his neck, back during the thick of it--a reminder of Crowley’s absence, as sharp and hollow as that habitual glance to his left falling on a stranger instead of the demon.

“Well,” Crowley chuckled, “the _rest_ of London seemed to like it. Though I suppose you can’t help not having a romantic bone in your body. Down to your basic nature, and all.”

“Not have a romantic bone in my body!” Aziraphale said, aghast. Crowley’s smile had another layer to it, he was sure, and the angel shook his head and poured the cognac. “You’ve no room to talk, Crowley--you wouldn’t even go see Romeo and Juliet with me more than that once.”

“What’s Romeo and Juliet to do with romance?” Crowley asked, collecting his glass and folding himself into the chair he’d draped his jacket over. “Dying in each other’s arms after getting within a hair’s breadth of running away together? All because of some stupid fight that had nothing to do with either one of them? That’s _depressing_, angel, not romantic.”

“Well, that part was depressing, yes, but the way they were both willing to throw off everything for each other? The way they should have hated each other but chose love instead?” Aziraphale smiled softly. One couldn’t help the ending of a tragedy, he supposed, but there was a great deal to be done in everything that came before. There had been the hope of renewal, the promise of a new beginning, the way the lovers had chosen each other over the anger of the past... “I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree, on that one.”

Crowley took a sip from his glass. “Oh, this _is_ good.”

“Did you honestly expect anything less from me?” Aziraphale asked, feigning shock. In all the time they’d known each other, Crowley had never seemed anything but pleased with Aziraphale’s table, though the contrary serpent could rarely be relied on to say it outright. He’d made something of a game of it over the years, making Aziraphale coax him into trying this and wheedle him into having a bit of that, pleased as punch at the attention and Aziraphale hardly objecting to an opportunity to fuss over him in earnest. He missed the days when sharing a meal had meant sharing a couch, but then modern tables allowed for their own intimacies.

“Turns out you’re full of surprises, angel,” Crowley told him, scrunching down low in the chair. “No idea what to expect from you tonight, really. Might be that His Majesty’s intrepid spies have had to inure themselves to rotgut and the dregs of humanity.”

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale huffed. He lifted his glass to his lips. “It was going swimmingly until tonight.”

It had been a bit of a dirty business, certainly, and the Nazi agents had all been the sort of people he wouldn’t have minded miracling right into a consumption ward if it hadn’t been for some fairly strict instructions from Upstairs about keeping the obvious miracles to a minimum.

“You know how that worked out for our side in the last one,” Gabriel had said when he’d protested, clapping him on the back too hard and sending him back to Earth as if that was the end of it. Which, Aziraphale supposed, it was, because it was Gabriel, but it also wasn’t, because no, Aziraphale _didn’t_ know how that had worked out for Heaven in the last one. Whatever communiques there’d been, no one had seen fit to share them with him.

But it had still felt good to get out there and think he was accomplishing something instead of sitting on his hands and writing increasingly testy memoranda about the worsening situation. He’d even been a bit proud of himself for venturing so far out of his comfortable little routine, against orders and all, to help people. 

Humans had gotten so hideously good at killing each other and hurting each other, and Crowley could protest that it was all their own doing until he was blue in the face--Aziraphale knew the ascendancy of Hell’s influence when he saw it. It felt like things were happening more quickly, too, the disasters coming faster on each other’s heels and bigger with every passing year. Gabriel could perhaps be forgiven for missing the smaller details and more subtle patterns, what with how rarely he made it down to Earth. Someone who hadn’t set foot on a city street or sat down to have a meal in a public house in centuries--someone so removed from it all--could never understand how different things felt, how much keener an edge everything had taken on. Humans were still as they’d always been, but there was something changing about _humanity_, something that Heaven had missed for lack of, as the humans said, speaking the language. It was all harder to really see from Upstairs, wasn’t it?

And it hadn’t been as if Aziraphale was intervening in any particularly angelic way--he’d just been giving the humans a helping hand. He might as well have been human himself, for all the miracles he’d been doing. It wasn’t the same righteous glow he got when he was appearing to someone in his divine form and telling them to fear not, for they’d found favor with the Lord, but it had been better than nothing. 

Right up until his handler had pulled a gun on him, anyway, and he’d suddenly been facing the distinctly uncomfortable possibility of having to explain everything to Gabriel in order to get a new corporation.

“It was not going swimmingly until tonight,” Crowley scoffed into his glass. “You just didn’t _know_ it wasn’t.”

Aziraphale made a face; Crowley had him there.

“What were you thinking, angel?” Crowley asked, more softly this time. “Discorporation, just to nab a few idiots who’d have been dead of a firing squad or a knife in the back before the year’s out anyway.”

“It’s not really so much different than what we’ve been doing for thousands of years, is it?” Aziraphale protested. “And even you have to admit I’m pretty good at that.”

Crowley pursed his lips and tapped his fingers slowly against the arm of his chair. “I think you’ll find I don’t _have_ to admit anything.” 

Crowley took a sip of cognac and held it in his mouth, closing his eyes. Aziraphale watched him begin to relax and wondered how long it had been, really. Was there a moment when Crowley’s smile had changed from one thing to another, when he looked at Aziraphale? Or had it been the same for Crowley as it had been for him, that gradual realization that he was happy when Crowley was around and missed Crowley when he was absent? The demon appeared, and whatever else was happening, Aziraphale knew that at least he wouldn’t have to face it alone. The demon appeared, and whatever else was happening, Aziraphale could at least hope.

Crowley swallowed the cognac and exhaled slowly, content. 

Behind his dark glasses, Crowley’s eyes opened again. His gaze moved to Aziraphale’s face, then away. “And it’s entirely different. Whole different bag of cats than dealing with a demon or an angel. Demons are demons, angels are angels. Once in a lifetime event, catching one of us acting like anything but what we are. Humans are…”

“Yes?” Aziraphale topped up his glass and waited. Crowley waved his hand and made a face, then sat up and braced his elbows on his knees.

“Well, they’re _human_,” he finished. 

“You don’t say,” Aziraphale said drily.

“No idea whatsoever, what a human’s going to do. Hell, the human in question usually doesn’t know what they’re going to do, from one moment to the next.” Crowley rubbed his chin. “They go into something with every intention of selling out their fellow man for everything they can get, and then they can’t do it and save everyone instead. Or they’ve got the very best and noblest of goals, and they chuck it all in for a quick bit of self-gratification, no questions asked.”

“They’re not as unpredictable as all that,” Aziraphale said.

“That’s your novels talking,” Crowley laughed, shaking his head. “Characters in a book, angel. They don’t have off days, or suddenly remember that time somebody said something rude, or freeze up in fear unless the plot needs ‘em to. Actual people are about as constant as the winds.” He glanced at the door leading to the shop. “So who do we have to thank for tonight? I know it wasn’t Orczy--she’d have had you expecting both the double-cross and the heroic rescue. Buchan? Conrad? _Doyle_?”

The angel nursed his cognac and gave Crowley a long look. “I’ll thank you to remember that I’ve spent just as much time around humans as you have.”

“Ugh. It was Doyle, wasn’t it?” Crowley asked, wrinkling his nose. “You have to keep in mind that the man couldn’t even decide whether or not he wanted to be a Freemason. Exciting stories, certainly, but they can’t be trusted. And chasing people out of your shop’s not quite the same as mingling.”

“Neither’s wading around in the aftermath of barbarism and war.” 

Crowley waited for a moment, hands spread, and Aziraphale sighed. All right, so they were, technically, in the middle of a war, but they were hardly on the front lines up to their knees in blood and corpses. Aziraphale getting people at their better moments was no more or less representative of the whole than Crowley seeing them at their weakest and most hateful. 

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m sure I don’t,” Crowley said. It was a lie, or a deliberate refusal to know, and Aziraphale could see a decision wending its way through Crowley’s mind. They were skirting too close to an argument, weren’t they? And it had been too long, and the way they’d parted the last time they’d seen each other was still too fresh.

Crowley drained his glass and got to his feet, and Aziraphale set his drink aside and stood as well. Any other night, he might have let Crowley go, circled back to him in a bit, tried to mend things without being too forward about it. But it was tonight, and Aziraphale had come perilously close to being discorporated for God only knew how long, and Crowley had still, after all this time, thought to save his books--and Crowley was still, after all this time, thinking about holy water.

“Hitchcock,” he said quietly.

“Hmm?” Crowley asked, brows furrowing.

“You asked who we have to thank for tonight,” Aziraphale reminded him, his own expression placid. It would be nice to catch Crowley off guard for once; he hadn’t managed it since that time in Rome when he’d asked if Crowley was still a demon and gotten the most adorably bewildered look in return. He’d never felt less guilty about pressing an unfair advantage than he had that night, when Crowley had let him take the lead for once. “And, if it’s anyone, it’s Hitchcock.”

Crowley’s lips moved as he repeated the name silently to himself. “Wh--the _director_?”

“As has been pointed out by the occasional esteemed colleague, I can’t spend the rest of eternity with my nose in a book,” Aziraphale told him. “And war being what it is, the playhouses aren’t showing much of anything to my tastes. The cinema, on the other hand…”

“You’re having me on, aren’t you?” Crowley rolled his eyes and groaned. “I save you from having to sit in some boring, antiseptic antechamber in Heaven filling out a thousand little memos and requisitions forms and destruction of corporation reports in triplicate, out of the goodness of my heart and at great personal inconvenience--”

“I thought you were already in the neighborhood?” Aziraphale asked mildly.

“--and this--this!--is the thanks I get.”

“Well, you did also get a bit of very nice liquor.” Aziraphale smiled gently in the face of Crowley’s scowl. “And I very much am not having you on. Spy films are all the rage these days, you know. And who can blame people? They’re very exciting, and glamorous, and clever. It’s all chases and puzzles instead of waiting around for years hoping to hear from a contact or worrying that the whole thing’s about to come crashing down around your ears. Arm in arm with a handful of comrades you’d trust with your life instead of a few people you hope you can count on and superiors you know you can’t. Gun-fights and mysteries instead of being afraid that someone going dark means that… that they’ve been caught.”

He hadn’t been worried, of course--not with Crowley bedded down in that echoing warehouse of an apartment of his for a seventy-year nap, dead to the world. Not with nothing going on that could have tipped their hand to Hell and seen the demon recalled for a meeting from which he’d never return. But Aziraphale had found himself walking past the apartment building every so often, strolling down the street for no reason other than to assure himself that Crowley was still there, still safe, and Aziraphale could sympathize with all those paranoid catastrophists tucked away in Blenheim Palace and St James's Street assuming the worst every time someone was late with a cable.

“In fact,” Aziraphale said, still smiling even as Crowley’s frown deepened, “if this was a spy film, and I was the cunning, resourceful secret agent at the center of it, in desperate straits but with the reckless daring of ten men--”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Crowley grunted, his face tightening. Aziraphale leaned toward him, and Crowley leaned away, keeping the distance between them constant, and it was such a _reflexive_ thing. Aziraphale would never have noticed it if he hadn’t been looking for it, would he? He didn’t think Crowley had meant to, or realized that he’d done it.

Aziraphale reached up and eased Crowley’s glasses off, and the demon froze, as fixed in place as if he’d stopped time again.

“--then I think this would be the part where the dashing officer playing my opposite tells me that he loves me, but duty comes first,” Aziraphale continued, his voice low, as if Crowley wasn’t staring at him with wild eyes. It was what one said, when one wanted someone to think it might be worth turning their back on duty for love. Aziraphale thought he could be happy if only Crowley could bring himself to openly admit to the love part. He caught his fingers in the front of Crowley’s shirt, then leaned forward and kissed him softly.

Aziraphale was dimly aware of Crowley’s hands curled into fists at his sides, but the demon wasn’t pushing him away, or moving to shake him off, or even breathing. After a long moment, Aziraphale leaned back and looked at him, trying to read the expression in those bronze-threaded eyes. He’d never seen that look on Crowley’s face before, had he?

“Angel.” Crowley’s voice was strangled, and Aziraphale’s heart caught in his chest.

“Yes?” he asked, and he barely recognized his own voice. Maybe this was where it all came crashing down around their ears, and Crowley told him he didn’t know anything about demons, either.

“Duty can go hang.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing. Of course it could. If he’d been able to stop and truly think about it for a moment instead of rushing into it before the window closed on them, he’d have known exactly what Crowley would say. “Ah. In that case, I suppose this would be the part where we retire to my bedroom for a night of wild, desperate passion, spurred on by the knowledge that danger lurks around every corner and that disaster could separate us at any moment.”

Crowley made a noise like he’d been punched, and then he was dragging Aziraphale into a wild, desperate, passionate embrace, and Aziraphale wrapped his hands around Crowley’s hips and braced himself before Crowley could tip them both right onto the floor. Crowley’s mouth was warm and yielding under his this time, the kiss hungry and eager and everything Aziraphale had always expected--_hoped_\--it would be.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale gasped, when the demon pulled away slightly to study his face, golden eyes searching. There was a frantic question in them, and Aziraphale kissed him gently. “Crowley, come upstairs with me.”

“The cognac was enough,” Crowley breathed, “if that’s what this is about.”

His arms didn’t budge from Aziraphale’s chest, though, and there was a terrible hope in his voice.

“Now who’s being ridiculous?” Aziraphale asked. He reached up and brushed a lock of Crowley’s hair back from his forehead. “I’m asking you to come upstairs with me because I want you to, and because I think you want to, too. I think we both have for rather a long time, now.” He looked around sheepishly. “And because if we try much of anything down here, we’ll make an awful mess.”

Crowley laughed and rubbed his face, fingertips unconsciously tracing the same path as Aziraphale’s had when he’d just touched him. “How could you tell?”

“Cheek,” Aziraphale said, shaking his head. He took Crowley’s hand and stepped away, leading him to the back staircase. Crowley’s fingers interlaced with his own, and Aziraphale couldn’t breathe for a moment.

It was a strange few moments, leading the demon up the stairs. Crowley’s hand was solid and vital in Aziraphale’s, his shoes clicked on the stairs behind the angel, the ghost of his cologne warmed the close air, and all Aziraphale could think of was poor Orpheus, looking back too soon and watching the rest of his life evaporate before his very eyes. He waited until the bedroom door thumped shut behind them to turn and pull Crowley to him.

Crowley nipped and sucked at his lower lip and smiled against his mouth and all but purred when Aziraphale dug his fingers into Crowley’s lower back. Aziraphale felt Crowley’s hands on his bowtie, then on his waistcoat and his shirt, and suddenly the air was cool on exposed skin. He stepped back, blushing furiously, and Crowley watched him. There was a fathomless hunger in his eyes, but the smile on his lips was soft and fond. Aziraphale tugged his tie the rest of the way off and shrugged out of his waistcoat, then rested his fingers just below the last button Crowley had managed before Aziraphale had stepped away.

“Would you stay the night?” he asked quietly.

Crowley licked his lips, gaze darting from Aziraphale’s eyes to his hands to his bare throat. 

“Would you…” His throat bobbed. “Would you want me to?”

Aziraphale’s flush deepened, and he looked down at the button between his fingers. Of course he wanted him to, but they were still an angel and a demon. Crowley might love him, and he’d loved Crowley for so long now that he couldn’t remember what it was like, not loving Crowley, but that didn’t necessarily translate into them loving in the same way, or wanting the same things, or even into it being safe to ask for precisely what they wanted. It was all so tangled up and complicated, what they might want and what they could have. How did all the femme fatales manage to project such confidence?

“I think I’d like that very much,” Aziraphale said, undoing the button and moving on to the next one. He paused there and looked up through his lashes, only to find Crowley watching him like the fate of the world hinged on the next few inches of bare skin.

“Whatever you want, angel,” Crowley whispered.

Oh. _Oh._

Aziraphale swallowed thickly. It wasn’t what Crowley had said so much as how he’d said it, the weight of conviction and promise and something like prayer all piled on such four short words. The power Crowley was handing him, and that from a demon who recognized no law but his own…

Aziraphale bit his lip and unbuttoned the rest of his shirt. “Come here, won’t you?”

And then Crowley’s arms were winding around his chest, and Crowley’s mouth was hot on his neck, and Crowley’s hands were sliding under the loose cloth at his back, gentle and soft over his skin. It was needy and hungry and nothing Aziraphale couldn’t have shaken off in an instant, Crowley’s strength kept so much in check that Aziraphale wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. All those melancholy nights spent trying to tease out what Crowley had intended by some little gesture or how much Crowley had meant some little compliment. How had he ever questioned Crowley’s affection?

Aziraphale gasped when Crowley’s nails trailed down his spine. Crowley’s teeth brushed carefully against the skin of Aziraphale’s throat, and he took Aziraphale by the hips and held him close, and Aziraphale wondered if it was possible to drown in someone’s warmth, in their scent. Was it possible to come like this, just from the closeness of it, like it was sometimes possible for him to taste wine from its bouquet or feel the sun’s heat just by watching it dapple the grass? 

Then Crowley’s hands found his belt buckle, and the buttons of his trousers, and suddenly the mouth on his neck was gone, the warmth of Crowley’s chest against his was gone, and Aziraphale hadn’t realized that he’d closed his eyes until he was opening them to look down at Crowley, at the demon on his knees before him.

Crowley paused, waiting, fear and hope at war in every line of his body, and a wave of aching, feverish _want_ swept through Aziraphale’s flesh. That beautiful, debauched creature, pride and rebellion incarnate, kneeling without even being asked. Aziraphale hadn’t known he could even desire such a thing until it was his for the taking, Crowley painfully vulnerable and in the palm of his hand. He ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair and cupped his cheek, and the demon relaxed slightly.

“Crowley, love,” Aziraphale sighed, “you musn’t let me hurt you.”

He swallowed and leaned into Aziraphale’s touch. “If you wanted--”

Not even the reflexive lie of “I wouldn’t,” and the angel remembered what it had been like to hold a flaming sword in his hands.

“I don’t.” Aziraphale’s hand tightened, and he tilted Crowley’s face up. “Not now, and not ever. Please tell me you understand that.”

Crowley let his eyes fall closed, and he reached up and laid his hand over Aziraphale’s. The fear was gone, though, and the hope seemed realized, and that was all the answer Aziraphale needed. Crowley would have let him, he was sure, would have accepted it as the price of admission the same way he’d had to accept so much else as the price of a corporation, the price of liberty, the price of power. The last thing Aziraphale wanted was to spoil such a precious gift, to give Crowley cause to regret having given it.

Aziraphale carded his fingers through Crowley’s hair again, gently, and after a moment Crowley took a breath and opened his eyes.

“Misdirection and subterfuge,” he murmured, his hands returning to the front of Aziraphale’s trousers. “You can’t think I’d be so easily distracted from a mission of such importance, angel.”

Aziraphale tried not to smile. The last thing the demon needed was encouragement in his mockery. 

“Crowley,” he said firmly. Crowley looked up and arched an eyebrow, his smile going lopsided when he caught Aziraphale’s expression. “Open your mouth, love.”

Crowley blinked at that, pupils going wide and dark, and he obeyed like it was second nature. Aziraphale freed his cock from his underclothes with a shiver, aching from tip to root for Crowley’s touch. Crowley curled his hands around Aziraphale’s hips and let Aziraphale’s cock slide over his tongue, and he looked like a painted martyr when he wrapped his lips around its base and drew back slowly, sucking with an agonizing, torturous gentleness.

It went on like that forever, Crowley giving him just enough to keep him from crying out at the lack of it, teasing him, making it build and build until Aziraphale was at the edge of begging him for more, and then finally he was coming, and Crowley was swallowing around him, and Aziraphale wondered if that was what it felt like, to hang the stars.

His knees buckled, and Crowley surged to his feet to catch him. He propped the angel up easily, carefully, and with a great deal of evident satisfaction in his work. Aziraphale could have done with a trifle less smugness, but he supposed that--and possibly, the way he felt like he’d discorporated for a moment there, when he’d been spilling down Crowley’s throat--was simply what one risked, when one dallied with spies, liars, and ne’er-do-wells. 

Crowley lowered Aziraphale to the bed, deftly removing the rest of his clothes along the way, and smirked.

“Never would have imagined all it took to lay an angel low was a bit of lust,” he said, his hands gentle on Aziraphale’s skin.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes and caught Crowley by his tie before he could straighten up all the way again. He wound the thin strip of silk around his hand slowly and surely, until the knot was in his fist and Crowley’s eyes were wide and focused on nothing but his face.

“I assure you, dearest,” he said, “I’m not in the least bit laid low.”

Crowley inhaled sharply and licked his lips, and Aziraphale kissed him tenderly. He wanted Crowley bare and in his arms, but the tie made such a convenient hold, and they’d waited such a long time already, hadn’t they? He reached down and tugged Crowley’s belt loose, eased his zipper open, and slipped his hand under the cloth.

Crowley gasped, his whole body stiffening, and it was only Aziraphale’s firm grip on the tie that kept him where he was. His cock was hard and slick against Aziraphale’s palm, and the noise he made when Aziraphale gave him a long, slow stroke earned him an even longer kiss.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, keeping his voice as gentle as Crowley’s touch had been, “tell me what you want.”

“I’d have thought it was a bit obvious at the moment, angel,” Crowley panted. Aziraphale let his hand drift back up the shaft, then ran his thumb over the slit, and Crowley hissed.

“I can guess, I suppose,” Aziraphale said, doing his best to keep his voice steady. It wasn’t easy, with Crowley so close and so eager. “But it would save a bit of time if you just told me, don’t you think?”

“To--” A becoming flush blossomed on Crowley’s cheeks, and he looked away. Aziraphale’s fingers tightened on his cock and began a slow descent back toward its base, and Crowley groaned, his features tightening as if in pain. “Angel, please!”

“Of course, love,” Aziraphale told him, and wasn’t it marvelous, how sure of himself he sounded in that moment? If he could just keep the facade from cracking for another minute, Crowley would confess, wouldn’t he? He’d already wasted so much time dithering over Crowley’s intentions, it would be nice, this once, to _know_. “Just as soon as you say it.”

“Beautiful, impossible bastard,” Crowley muttered, his head bent to Aziraphale’s ear. Aziraphale felt the blaze of that flush against his cheek. “I want to fuck you so well that Heaven loses its luster.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t expected knowing to feel quite like this, had he? Crowley was practically vibrating against him, the silk of the tie gone taut against his hand where Crowley was already pulling on it, and Aziraphale turned to kiss the base of his jaw. “Crowley, dearest, take off your clothes.”

And then those lovely, damnably inconvenient trousers were gone, along with everything else, and Aziraphale smiled to find that Crowley had left the tie. He gave Crowley one last stroke, a reward and a promise, then dragged the demon all the way onto the bed with him.

“Shall I straddle you, or--”

Crowley answered the question by shoving Aziraphale’s thighs apart and positioning himself firmly between them, then pressing himself along Aziraphale’s chest and kissing the breath from his lungs. His hands shook as he gripped the angel’s shoulders.

“Shh, love,” Aziraphale laughed. He sucked at Crowley’s lower lip and hooked his heels around the back of Crowley’s thighs. “Just give me a moment to prepare myself, and we can--”

“Let me,” Crowley said, and his tone was so earnest that Aziraphale could only nod.

Then there was a gentle but insistent pressure within him, warm and wet and inescapable, and the angel gasped and arched up against Crowley’s chest. It eased after a moment, then held steady, and Crowley sucked at his earlobe.

“Good? Not too much?” he asked.

“No, it’s good,” Aziraphale said, shivering. He thought he rather preferred the traditional way, but then he’d never considered simply miracling himself open, and he’d certainly never been with someone who could do it for him.

Crowley opened him by degrees, taking his time, holding him close and kissing his throat and chuckling and asking if it was still good whenever Aziraphale’s hold on the silk tightened, all until Aziraphale couldn’t bear it a moment longer.

He pulled Crowley up to face him, knuckles white around the crimson silk looped loose around Crowley’s neck.

“I think I’m quite ready, love, if you think you’re done teasing me,” he told him.

Crowley’s smile turned sly, but it couldn’t hide the affection glowing in his eyes. 

“All you had to do was ask, angel.” His head dipped, and he sucked a mark onto Aziraphale’s skin. His voice was barely more than a whisper when he said, “Not in a big hurry to hurt you, either, you know.”

Crowley shifted his weight, slid down a little so that he could rest the head of his cock against Aziraphale’s entrance, and took a breath. Aziraphale throbbed with the need to have Crowley inside him, up to the hilt and cleaved to one another, and tried to make himself relax. They’d waited centuries on top of centuries; he could wait another thirty seconds.

It was an ecstatic agony when Crowley began pushing inside of him, as slow and as gentle as he’d been when he’d sucked Aziraphale’s cock, oblivious--or perhaps all too cognizant--of how badly he was trying the angel’s resolve. Once he was fully seated, he dug his fingers into Aziraphale’s hair and sighed against his throat.

“Are you--”

“I’m about ten seconds from rolling us over and taking care of this myself, is what I am,” Aziraphale warned him. Crowley laughed and nipped at the delicate skin of his shoulder.

“Patience is a virtue,” he scolded. 

He began thrusting gently, and Aziraphale groaned and wrapped his legs around that narrow waist. It turned out that Crowley had been trying his own resolve along with Aziraphale’s, and suddenly the slightest encouragement from the angel was all it took to get everything he wanted, as quickly as he wanted it.

It was as delicious as he’d always thought it would be--Crowley’s lean frame writhing in his arms, that decadent voice hissing endearments against his skin, his flesh clenching around that glorious cock. It had fit so well in his hand, just as well as his had fit to Crowley’s mouth, as Crowley’s face had fit to the curve of his own throat, as if their corporations had been made to complement one another, measured and cut to fit together like interlocking pieces of the ineffable puzzle.

Aziraphale was almost at the precipice again himself when Crowley came, his arms wrapped tight around Aziraphale’s back and his breath an incoherent litany of blessings and curses until even that fell away and it was simply angel, angel, _angel_. They clung together, shivering, for the few minutes it took Crowley to realize how hard Aziraphale was against his belly.

“Let me see it, angel,” he murmured, and he put just enough space between them so that Aziraphale could get a hand around his cock.

It felt divine, bringing himself off with Crowley still inside him, holding him gently, whispering how beautiful he looked, kissing him. It felt like a loss, when Crowley’s cock finally slipped from its mooring, and Crowley rolled to the side to hold him close but not quite as close as he’d been when they’d been almost of one flesh.

“Shame we didn’t do this ages ago,” Aziraphale sighed. He turned his head so that he could see Crowley’s face. “Do you think you might like to change your corporation a bit so that it has a cunny, next?”

Crowley blinked at him, his expression blank, and then a look of shocked delight spread across his features. “Absolutely full of surprises, tonight.”

“All part of life as one of Heaven’s most daring--” Crowley’s theatrically impatient groan cut him off, and Aziraphale couldn’t keep from laughing. When he’d managed to stop, he sighed and continued, more quietly, “We don’t have to, of course, if you don’t want. I’ve got quite a long list--we could just skip to the next thing on it and see if that appeals more.”

“You’ve got…” Crowley squirmed against him, practically purring into his hair. “You’ve got a list, have you?”

“You left me far too long just thinking about it, love.” 

He hadn’t meant to think about it, not nearly so much as he had, but God help him, there’d been nothing else for it. Crowley’d been too kind, and too impertinent, and too lovely, and too ready to hand for too, too long for Aziraphale not to have. Even when he’d had no hope of Crowley loving him, there’d been the ever-present possibility of Crowley _lusting_ after him and the ever-present possibility of that, maybe, being enough. 

It wouldn’t have been; he knew that now.

“Well, no arguing with that, I suppose,” Crowley told him, his tone suspiciously sincere and sober. “I’ll just have to make it up to you, then.” Aziraphale could hear the moment that too-enthralled grin crept back onto his face. “Starting with a cunny.”


End file.
